I’m a foodie. I love good food. It can be fancy or at a diner, cheap or pricey, down home or from far off places. It really doesn’t matter to me! Anytime I get to sit down and enjoy a good meal I am thankful. I have a friend who is a chef and it is always a particular joy to eat in his restaurants. He and his team are extremely creative in what they do and produce some of the bet dishes in this city. Whenever I eat a dish from Fernando, afterwards I think a couple of things: 1) That was amazing! 2) Fernando is a phenomenal chef. You see the work ultimately points me back to the one who did the work. The food didn’t just appear on a plate. The concept didn’t just materialize out of thin air. There is a creator behind at all. As much as I enjoy the food, I appreciate the one behind it even more.

This past Sunday at Eastpoint, we studied Daniel Chapter 4. In it we find the end of a story arch featuring a king named Nebuchadnezzar. The previous 3 chapters involved this king seeing mighty works of God in his life. Each time God would do something amazing, the king was impressed by the work, but never fully grasped the One behind the behind the work. It was not until a particularly humbling experience in Daniel 4 that the king begins to realize the point behind the miracles he had witnessed wasn’t simply to see the miracles themselves. The point is to know the Miracle Worker.

I challenged our church Sunday, and have to challenge myself often, with the idea that if we see the works of God without seeing the God behind the work we are missing the point. I am thankful for each blessing, each story, each miracle I have in my life. But the point is not to simply see the work. God works in our lives to reveal Himself to us! The king was humbled not out of spite, but so that he would see his need for One greater than himself. If seeing God at work around us does not lead us to a deeper love for him we are worshipping the wrong thing.

Psalm 8 gives us a clear picture of how the work of God should lead us to worship of God:

How Majestic Is Your Name

To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.

O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger. When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field, the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the seas. O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

(Psalm 8 ESV)

May we live with an appreciation for the work of God that leads us into a greater love for God. How majestic is His name!